what if any advantage/benefit to a regular internet user is there to having a DNS ... that does just basic browsing, streaming, being on a forum, emails?

appreciate any points - thanks

More...

You may be confused about what a DNS server does. It simply convert's www.elitetrader.com into 104.197.100.237 which is what the internet routers use to find the actual site and deliver it back to you. It's basically a big lookup table of URLs and their corresponding IP addresses, that's all. Your ISP has one which is used by default, and unless it's causing you problems for some reason there's really not a lot of reason to go with an external one. It doesn't impact the speed at which you stream or download or upload anything, it's just used once per query to do the url to IP translation.

Quad is a better one when it comes to privacy. One can research this aspect, if necessary. Google is the most horrible offender. For browsing Mozilla uses a DNS data protection technique now. There are many things on each network model level one could do, but this can be involved and the work will never stop. If one is fluent in technology, a router on Opnsense with Untangle could be easily built. If not, there are commercial solutions, many many options that steal the precious time of your life.